2Alice was always enamoured with how strange Wonderland was and how they seemed to have a giant mixing bowl of modern time, olden times, and future times. Their guns, for instance, were evolved far beyond those of her time. They shot faster, had more bullets, where lighter. But on that same note, they had no communication devices and still relied on messengers while they also had conveniences such as trains in Diamond and electronic coffee makers in every cafe. Truly, it was all jumbled and Alice was never sure what the right thing to ask for was in any situation.
Pregnancy tests where one of those many things she wasn't sure of, but there was always a way to test for it, even in the oldest times in her original world. For instance, a pregnant woman could pee on a south african clawed frog and it would either ejaculate or lay eggs within 10 to 12 hours depending on the gender of said frog. Her world had simpler things like blood tests at hospitals, or little sticks that you could take home and pee on. She was almost positive Wonderland doctors didn't have such a thing for her to use and even if they did, she did not want anyone to know, especially with how rumours spread so easily here. So she went to Elizabeth. Elizabeth was good at keeping secrets for anyone who walked through the doors of her shop.
She was not expecting the woman to pull out a knife and a mason jar full of what looked like Gray's cooking. Moving, bubbling, squirming black goo that was trying to climb the walls of its container in order to get out and flee. To be quite frank, it was quite terrifying to look upon.
"Whaaaaaaaaat is that?" She asks critically and backs always slowly, having a faint thought about running away from the slime. If it was even half as deadly as Gray's cooking could be then she wanted to be as far away from it as possible before it had the chance to kill her.
Elizabeth notices her movements and gives her a scalding look of disappointment which so very clearly said that she was upset that Alice thought she would ever get seriously hurt under her care. Now she feels quite bad about her overreaction and steps forward again with an apologetic look in her eyes that causes the older woman's face to loosen up and a sigh to drift out from between her full painted red lips.
"It is called Afterimage sludge. It is something that is left behind when Afterimages reform with their clocks again. The clockmaster usually gives it to the doctor's for this express purpose but I keep some on hand in case a customer is someone important like a noble or a roleholder's affair. One of the king's many lovers came here once." Elizabeth shrugs and gently takes a hold of Alice's hand.
"And was she? Pregnant, I mean." Alice asks slowly, not entirely sure that she actually wanted to know the answer. It was more of a pathetic attempt to distract herself from what the results of the test might be. On one hand, she was excited. She had always wanted to be a mother, albeit she had always envisioned them as being planned. On the other, she was so nervous. It was ingrained in her from a young age that women shouldn't have relations with men that they weren't married to and if she where to have this child then she wouldn't know who the father was until it was born. Such a thing would have her exiled by friends and family alike in her old home.
Elizabeth gives a thinly veiled smile and shakes her head at the question, giving Alice's hand a comforting squeeze as if she was like Nightmare who could read her thoughts and knew exactly what was going on in the young lady's mind. "If I told you then I wouldn't exactly be a good secret keeper now, would I?" She chuckles and then turns serious. "This will hurt for a moment but then I'll bandage it for you." She says and makes a thin slice across the girl's wrist and puts a small rubber ball in her hand. "Perfect, now squeeze that to keep the blood flowing. If you're pregnant then the sludge will move away from your blood. If you're not then the sludge will remain the same." Elizabeth explains and starts to slowly undo the cap of the mason jar, leading her bleeding wrist over top the jar so that the red liquid could drip onto the sludge. "Afterimages detest living blood, especially the blood of a new being. It's life force is too strong."
At first, nothing at all happened and Alice let out a sigh that was of an emotion she couldn't identify just yet. It could've been relief but it also could have been disappointment. Elizabeth was just about to pull her hand away when all of a sudden the sludge shot up towards her hand with a loud shriek that sounded like nails on a chalkboard, hurting her ears immensely.
Alice quickly jumped away but tripped over her heels at the last second, falling flat onto her back and hitting her head on a shelf behind her as the sludge made another jump at her. Or, to be more accurate, it jumped towards her stomach. At the last second, Elizabeth was able to slam the jar and lid over it mid air before it could reach her, sealing it again despite it's loud noises and banging at the glass.
"What does that mean?" She asks quickly as Elizabeth shakily puts the jar away in a trunk beneath the counter just out of sight, locking it up with a strange looking key. The older woman was pale and didn't even acknowledge Alice's question at all so she asked again, becoming panicked and desperate. "Elizabeth, what does that mean?!" She screams and that seems to snap her out of her trance like state, a look of pity molding onto her face.
"It means-" She took a deep breath to compose herself and stood up straighter, looking Alice in the eyes. "Alice, it means your child is dying."
Alice stands in silence for a few moments, her breath caught in her throat, her heart stopping it's rhythmic beating for a moment. A single tear wells up and slides out of her duct, slipping down her cheek to fall off her chin and burrow into the crevice of her breasts which were tense with the heaviness of her heart. "What?"
